The present invention relates to a mobile phone, in particular a mobile phone according to the GSM (GSM=Groupe Speciale Mobile) standard, having at least one electronic telephone directory, one of which is stored on the SIM card and, if applicable, the other electronic telephone directory or directories is/are arranged in the nonvolatile memory of the telephone.
Mobile phones of the prior art according to the GSM standard generally have at least one electronic telephone directory, and it has now become the practice almost always to use two or more telephone directories. One of these telephone directories is stored on the SIM (SIM=Subscriber Identity Module) card, referred to below as SIM, and thus can be transported from one mobile phone to another. In contrast, the other telephone directory or directories is/are in the nonvolatile, internal memory which can be formed, for example, by EEPROMs or flash or battery-buffered RAM modules.
The internal data format of the SIM for storing telephone directory entries requires that a telephone directory entry be composed of a sequence of numbers (telephone number) and an associated sequence of alphanumeric characters (name). The maximum length of the telephone number is at least 20 numbers, and the maximum length of the name can be between 0 and 241 characters.
The same format is usually used for telephone directory entries which are located in the nonvolatile memory, it being possible for the maximum lengths to differ from those on the SIM card. In other words, the number of attributes or features of a telephone directory entry, an attribute being a telephone number or a name in this case, has been prescribed by the GSM standard and SIM card and is two.
Because, to date, the number of attributes for telephone entries of an SIM card has been prescribed, flexible use of the telephone directory of a mobile phone (for example, the grouping of telephone numbers according to certain properties such as work or personal), has not been possible.
The document EP-A-0 860 970 discloses a method for administering an electronic telephone directory or a telephone number database in the form in which it exists, for example, on an SIM card of a mobile phone. The telephone number database is divided into two memory areas; namely, into a first memory area in which telephone numbers which can be addressed via an abbreviated dialing method are arranged, and into a second memory area in which telephone numbers which cannot be addressed via an abbreviated dialing method are arranged. If a telephone number in the second memory area without the abbreviated dialing property is then to be shifted to a storage location in the first memory area with the abbreviated dialing property, the telephone number to be shifted is first shifted into a buffer, the number at the destination of the first memory area is shifted to the exit location of the memory area of the number to be shifted and then the number to be shifted is removed from the buffer and transmitted to the destination in the first buffer.
The document WO 98/30053 shows a mobile radio unit which has a telephone directory which is stored on an SIM card and a telephone directory which is stored in an EEPROM of the mobile radio unit. In order to select telephone directory entries easily, the two telephone directories are combined in an assignment table and abbreviated dialing numbers are assigned to specific telephone directory entries.
The document EP-A-0 915 604 discloses a method for searching through a database for a specific entry; in particular, for searching for an entry in a telephone directory which is stored in a mobile phone. The improved searching for a telephone directory entry is carried out in that, starting with the entry of a specific letter, all the variations of entries which have the entered letter and a different second letter are displayed. If the second letter of the entry is then also determined, all the variations of the first two entered letters appear with a third variable letter which also can be specified in a subsequent step. By repeated inputting of the respective following letters, a specific database entry or telephone directory entry is thus found.
The present invention is, therefore, directed toward acquiring expanded applications via telephone directory entries, in particular of forming groups of telephone directory entries and, in this way, dividing up the telephone numbers according to personal, business or other criteria, for example. The intention of the present invention is to overcome the format of the number of attributes which has been previously prescribed by the GSM standard and is of restricted length.